We couldn't agree more.
A pity we can't all give our PCs a day off though! 
For those of us who grew up with computers, it might seem that the beige box has been around forever, but on Saturday morning you might like to wish your PC a happy 25th birthday.
It was back in 1981 that IBM took the wraps off its first Personal Computer, and it was subsequently launched with great fanfare in Australia 16 months later.
Brian Finn, IBM's managing director at the time, described the PC as "the computer for just about everyone who has ever wanted a personal system in the office, on the university campus or at home".
A starter system cost $4273 (in Australian Dollars) and featured 64K memory, a 160KB disk drive, ran on Microsoft's Disk Operating System (DOS) and included a keyboard and monitor.
In the two years after the launch of the IBM PC, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of units were sold worldwide, and as it became the dominant force in the market throughout the 1980s, the decade also gave birth to the adage: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."
Although IBM was the first to ship a Personal Computer to market, the company's machine was not the first to bring microprocessor technology to the masses. That movement was born in 1976 when Apple rolled out the Apple II computer.
Despite the IBM brand becoming virtually synonymous with PCs during the '80s, the company's strength in the corporate market was forged through its historical association with the massive computers that predated microprocessors, typically run by teams of specialists charged with feeding in instructions.
What proved to be IBM's great strength in the Personal Computer market was its broad industry support from a range of software and hardware players, an open architecture that encouraged third-party development, and attractive prices.
The decade also gave birth to a precursor to the laptop, with IBM's "Portable Personal Computer" hitting the market in 1984. Weighing in at 30 pounds, the machine was touted as being able to "travel where the work is".
The Personal Computer spawned a number of rivals throughout the '80s and a whole new market evolved based on IBM "clones", which ultimately proved a generous source of income for the company in licence fees.
Source: The Age
1 comment:
I worked with that machine! My son is still laughing...
Regards from Mosterio
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